symposium Transformation Digital Art

Thursday 18 & Friday 19 february, 2016

LIMA Amsterdam

Preservation of born-digital/software based art
Digital artworks form a separate group in museum collections. Museums and visitors do not have much experience in dealing with these artworks. Management, preservation and presentation of it is largely unknown territory, while museums and artists need knowledge about this vulnerable digital part of modern heritage. How can they keep digital born artworks accessible in the future?

The need for new infrastructures
Digital art and culture is default, pervasive and under continuous development. The innovative users of these new technologies are media artists, visual artists, contemporary composers, photographers, architects and designers. Emerging technology gives artists ever new artistic platforms and possibilities and challenges for audience interaction. Inextricably linked is the fact that today's ever-evolving innovative technology is the heritage of the future. A future that very quickly becomes obsolete. The accelerated highly technical nature of born digital art is in need for new infrastructures and innovation specific to its digital nature, such as acquisition, documentation, preservation, presentation policies, practise and protocols.

Symposium
In the final presentation of the project Transformation Digital Art, SBMK and LIMA organise an international symposium to address software based art preservation. This project was based on research and case studies from various collections, focussing on works by the Dutch artist/digital pioneer Peter Struycken, with an exemplary function for other born-digital artworks. Practical protocols, sustainable storage and awareness of the wider public are realised in this joint research project. We want to share our practice, experience, views and results with professionals working in the fields of conservation and access to digital art and culture. During these two days, international state-of-the-art methodologies and technologies will be presented and discussed. The programme consists of keynotes, workshops, panel discussions and a short film.
We invite you to share your own research or case studies with us in the Pecha Kucha.